Popular audiences.
Language is full of faded metaphors which show how the things of the mind are conceived in images formed through the senses. Those who address popular audiences clothe their thoughts in figures of speech based upon the mental pictures in which the common people carry on their thinking. The ability to think in the language of science and philosophy is a later development, and those who by disuse or neglect impair their power to think in sense-images pay a penalty in losing, or never acquiring, the power to move the multitudes.
Mental pictures.
The power to think in mental pictures, or through the sense-impressions which memory recalls, varies in different persons. Occasionally the sense of touch is very active; the child in such cases manifests a desire to handle everything within reach, and undoubtedly gains impressions of peculiar strength answering its desire to know. A limited number of children in every school get their best impressions through the ear, and hence are said to be ear-minded; but the far larger proportion are eye-minded to the extent of connecting their most accurate knowledge with images obtained through vision. Similar peculiarities existamong older persons. A friend claims that he hears the voices of speakers while reading the proof-sheets of their speeches. Another friend claims that he cannot bring up a mental picture of the faces of his children and his friends, but he writes out strains of music which he thinks and hears while seated on railway cars. The power of bringing up a vivid picture of the breakfast-table, or of some scene of special interest, is possessed by many persons. They live over again in memory the delights of travel, and enjoy scenery through the vivid mental pictures stored away in the treasure-house of memory. The ability to appreciate the best literature in prose and poetry depends largely upon the power of visualizing the realities at the basis of the descriptions and figures of speech. Francis Galton thinks that the perspicuous style of French literature and the wonderful manual skill of the French people is due to their power of thinking in visual images. He says,—
The French.
“The French appear to possess the visualizing faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fêtes of all kinds and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy show that they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase ‘figurez-vous,’ or ‘picture to yourself,’ seems to express their dominant mode of perception. Our equivalent of ‘imagine’ is ambiguous.”[29]
Galton’s investigations.
The profession of teaching owes Mr. Galton a special debt of gratitude for the light which his investigations throw upon the process of thinking. These investigations were published in a volume entitled “Inquiriesinto Human Faculty.” When he began to inquire among his friends as to their power to call up mental pictures of the breakfast-table, those engaged in scientific pursuits were inclined to consider him fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the wordsmental imageryreally expressed what he thought everybody supposed them to mean. He says they had no more notion of its true nature than a color-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of color. When he spoke to persons in general society, he got very different replies. Among other curious things which he discovered, he found that the power of thinking in sense-images, or mental pictures, may be partly inherited, partly developed by practice, and that it may be impaired by disuse or by the habit of hard thinking peculiar to men engaged in scientific pursuits. Scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of visual representation. He reached the conclusion that “an over-ready perception of sharp mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of highly generalized and abstract thought, especially when the steps of reasoning are carried on by words as symbols, and that if the faculty of seeing the pictures was ever possessed by men who think hard, it is very apt to be lost by disuse.”
Wrong methods.
He further claims that the visualizing faculty can be developed by education. This is very significant. It shows how unwise methods may harm our children in two directions. The wrong method may keep the mind at work in the concrete when the science under consideration demands more advanced and very different methods of thought. In the other direction the mind may be tied to words, descriptions, book methods, and symbolic representations, whereas the thinking which one’s future duties demand points in the direction of drawing, mechanics, and handicrafts, inwhich success turns upon the power of thinking in visual images and mental pictures. One cannot forbear quoting his language in so far as it bears upon the thinking developed by schools for manual training in distinction from the thinking developed by the university which aims to fit its students for the professions and for scientific thought and experimental research.
Thinking in images.
“There can, however, be no doubt as to the utility of the visualizing faculty when it is duly subordinated to the higher intellectual operations. A visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and relations of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands. The village smith and the carpenter who are employed on odd jobs employ it no less for their work than the mechanician, the engineer, and the architect. The lady’s maid who arranges a new dress requires it for the same reason as the decorator employed on a palace, or the agent who lays out great estates. Strategists, artists of all denominations, physicists who contrive new experiments, and, in short, all who do not follow routine, have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know; they carry whole picture-galleries in their minds. Our bookish and wordy education tends to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our generalizations is starved by lazy disuse instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will, on the whole, bring thebest return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing and utilizing this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science of education.”[30]
What is meant by the process of unselfing the will? If the maxim is interpreted to mean that education must eliminate the selfishness of the individual, and teach him to will and act for the good of humanity, especially of all with whom he comes in contact, the maxim points out an important end of education. If, on the other hand, the maxim is made to mean that the self, with its peculiarities, is to be sacrificed in the educative process, it carries a contradiction on its face. The lower self may have to be sacrificed in order that the higher self may be conserved. He that loseth his life shall save it; he that saveth his life shall lose it, is the teaching of Holy Writ.
Open a dictionary and search for words indicating how the belief in the necessity of emancipating life from the dominion of self has been woven into the very texture of the English language. Egotism, which originally meant the excessive use of the pronoun I, has come to signify all kinds of self-praise, self-exaltation, and to include all manner of parading one’s virtues and excellencies; egoism denotes a state of mind in which the feelings are concentrated on self. Vanity and self-conceit are two words closely allied to the natural selfishness of the human heart. The former indicates the feeling which springs from the thought that we are highly esteemed by others; the latter is an overweening opinion of one’s talents, capacities, and importance. There is another list of compound words, like self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, which point to the importance of eliminatingself and thoughts of self from the soul’s activities in thinking and willing. Virtues like humility, love, service, sacrifice, are lauded in every Christian land. They are the Christian virtues exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, who lived to do good to others, and who died that the sinning, sorrowing millions on earth might find peace and consolation for their troubled souls.
Selfishness.
The unselfing of the will depends as much upon right thinking as does the unsensing of the mind. The untrained mind deals too much with things near at hand in the objective world; the uneducated will deals too much with the thing nearest to every man in the subjective world,—the individual self. The thought of self may enter so thoroughly into the feelings and activities of the soul that the rights of others are never thought of in the gratification of self and in the efforts at self-aggrandizement and self-glorification. Selfish desire and selfish ambition may dominate the soul and cause the individual to trample upon the dearest rights of others. The millions which some men heap up are squeezed from the productive toil of thousands, perhaps millions, of human hands. Colossal fortunes can seldom be made without reducing a considerable number of human beings to a condition of living from hand to mouth, to a state of chronic poverty. That the inordinate ambition of a masterful politician may be gratified, the hopes of other aspirants must be frustrated and their rights must be trampled upon. Hence in the end there is little happiness among office-holders and office-seekers. The selfishness of great conquerors is still more inexcusable. In the effort to gratify an unholy ambition the lives of thousands are sacrificed, their blood is spilt upon the battle-field, and their health is undermined by suffering and disease. If the men who send the soldier to the front were themselves compelled to sleep in ditches, or toexpose themselves to the fire of machine-guns upon the open field, wars would not be declared, or, if declared, would soon cease.
Self-sacrifice.
The higher life demands that the lower self be subordinated, regulated and sublimated in the education of man. The individual may be taught to find happiness in self-sacrifice for the sake of others, in deeds of love, charity, and benevolence. That this may result from the educative process, there should occur a change of heart, resulting in a change of view and in a transformation of the habits of thought so that self is seen in its true relation to mankind and to God, so that the things of time and sense shall stand in true relation to the verities of eternity and the interests of the higher life.
Self-development.
On the other hand, if the maxim is interpreted to mean that any giftsorpowers of the self are to be sacrificed in preparation for a given calling, say for the army or navy, it becomes a dangerous heresy. The true end of education is found in the harmonious development of all our faculties. Every man is in one sense the product of countless ages and generations, and from another point of view he is a new creation fresh from the hand of his Maker, and a distinct setting forth of the creative power of Him who said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” As such he has a claim upon immortality, as well as upon all the help which earth can give him towards a full realization of self. Every person feels that there are possibilities of his being which are never realized in this world; that it will require the ceaseless ages of eternity to unfold and mature his God-given powers and traits. Any unselfing of the will in the sense of sacrificing or checking the growth and fruition of the best of which the self is capable, is a violation of Spencer’s famousdefinition that education is a preparation for complete living.
Justice to others.
What, then, is the relation of the imaging power to the proper unselfing of the will and the full realization of the self? “A great deal of the selfishness of the world comes not from bad hearts, but from languid imaginations.”[31]To do justice to others, we must put ourselves in their place. This we cannot do except through the exercise of the imagination. The imagination is the creative power of the mind. By means of it we can create for our thinking the world in which our neighbor lives, and learn to understand his motives, aims, hopes, needs, and temptations. This will keep us from many a mistake in judging his conduct and estimating his character. Moreover, this thinking of ourselves into the life and surroundings of our fellow-men is a condition of success in dealing with them. It helps the merchant to sell his wares and the teacher to govern his pupils. It helps the orator to reach the hearts of the audience whom he is addressing, and the journalist to write editorials that will modify the views and mould the thinking of the reading public. Every profession and every occupation requires the constant exercise of the imagination so that we may see life from our neighbor’s point of view, and, in sympathizing with him or helping him, outgrow our innate selfishness. A hard, cruel, unforgiving man makes a failure of life even though he win riches, fame, and public position.
Ideals.
By means of the imagination we paint ideals of life and conduct, which hover before the mind in the hour of struggle and trial, luring us onward and upward, spurring us to greater effort, and giving to life added charms and glories. Without the power to imaginewhat is beyond the real, the workman sinks to the level of drudgery, and never rises to the plane of artistic production.
The child’s imagination.
Geography.
The imagination is very active in children. Watch their plays if you would see how they convert a stick into a horse, the play-house into a home, and mimic the drama of life in their games and contests. Their life is largely make-believe and thinking in images. This tendency to think in images can be utilized in the lessons in arithmetic, geometry, geography, and history. Without the combination of images into new forms and products, the pupil cannot think the thoughts peculiar to these branches. For instance, the lesson in geography starts with what the child has seen or can see at home, and proceeds to that which is away from home, using pictures, drawings, lantern-slides, and vivid descriptions to aid the imagination in picturing scenery, cities, countries, and forms of life in other parts of the globe. It may be a question what the mind should think in connection with the symbols and truths of that science. The form of a continent is without doubt best conceived as given on a map. For many practical purposes, cities may be thought as mere starting-points and halting-places in a journey. Many a river is for mature minds a winding black line on colored surfaces called maps. Nevertheless, if geography means for a pupil no more than this, it will be dry and uninteresting indeed. Out of the images of things observed the mind should be led to construct images of what it has not seen. These images are never an adequate picture of the foreign city or country, even after they have been supplemented or modified by visits to museums, conservatories, and zoological gardens, by excursions to the field, the forest, and the factory, or even by travel at home and abroad. The thoughts of a country that onehas journeyed through, or lived in for a time, consist partly of images and partly of symbolic representations. Since thinking in images is easier for beginners than thinking in symbols, the instruction in geography should begin with child-life at home, with the things on the breakfast-table, with the garments worn and the means of transportation used, and proceed from these to the life, the home, the dress, and the sports of children living in other lands and other climes. The lessons in geography make constant appeals to the imagination, and call for thinking in images or mental-pictures in connection with map-symbols and the discussions of causes and laws.
History.
Not less valuable is the power of imaging in the study of history. Many details are worthless and meaningless until the imagination weaves them into a fabric in which their relations and significance become apparent. So far as the trend of history is concerned, it would have mattered very little if the name of the ship in which the Pilgrim fathers sailed had been Aprilshower instead of Mayflower, if the number of passengers had been one hundred and one instead of exactly one hundred, if they had landed at some place other than Plymouth Rock. Their coming, their compact, their religious life and purposes were of chief importance. Details help to fill out the mental picture of their voyage, landing, and settlement. They throw a halo of interest around the central event, or germinal idea. Or, to change the figure, they furnish the scaffolding by means of which the teacher gradually raises the edifice of historical knowledge. After the edifice has been completed the scaffolding may be removed. After the essential or central idea has been grasped and fixed, details like the name of the ship, the number of emigrants, and the exact day of their arrival may be forgotten. The mind can oftenunload the luggage that is not absolutely needed, and move with more ease and speed into new fields of thought and investigation.
Geometry.
Arithmetic.
Geometry has been aptly styled eine Augenwissenschaft, “a science of the eye” (the last word being used not as the object with which the science deals, but as the means by which its ideas are acquired). The line drawn upon the black-board has breadth, and is not at all a mathematical line. Through the eye it serves to suggest the line which has length without breadth or thickness. Progress in solid geometry is impossible if the mind does not image or conceive the volumes of three dimensions indicated by the drawings on a surface which has but two dimensions. In arithmetic many of the business transactions upon which the problems are based have not come into the experience of the child, but must be evolved by appeals to the imagination if the solutions are to be brought within easy reach of the understanding. The power of combining images into new forms aids greatly in the construction of apparatus and in the making of experiments. It helps the scientist to evolve his theories and hypotheses. It is the faculty by which man becomes a creator in science, art, literature, and philosophy.
Creative imagination.
Productive thinking.
Knowledge uncommunicated.
Few suggestions for the exercise of the creative imagination can be given. Here rules are more of a hinderance than a help. The imagination is not creative in the sense of evolving something out of nothing,—this notion has misled many in their estimate of genius,—but in the sense of producing that which never existed, at least for the individual himself. Its activity has been denominated plastic from the fact that it moulds and fashions the materials or images into the forms which the new product is to assume. The influence of judgment is needed to keep the imaginationfrom violating the laws and principles inherent in the things from which its materials are drawn. The understanding aids and is aided by this creative, plastic function of the imagination. The two should have free play in productive thinking. Let the student of science or art saturate himself with the theme on which he is working; let him keep health and energy of body and mind at their highest point; let him concentrate his best powers on what is to be accomplished, keeping clearly in mind the end to be reached and the materials to be used; the product for which he is working will spring into being in ways that he cannot explain. Like an unfathomable well which has been gathering its waters through hidden channels from mysterious sources, the stream of thought comes welling up from the depth of the soul into the conscious life of the thinker, giving him the living waters by which he can satisfy the thirst for knowledge felt by other souls. In expressing, formulating, and communicating the thoughts which thus come to him he cannot help feeling the “joy of creating.” “The history of literature,” says Shedd, “furnishes many examples of men whose knowledge only increased their sorrow, because it never found an efflux from their own minds into the world. Knowledge uncommunicated is something like remorse unconfessed. The mind, not being allowed to go out of itself, and to direct its energies towards an object and end greater and worthier than itself, turns back upon itself, and becomes morbidly self-reflecting and self-conscious. A studious and reflecting man of this class is characterized by excessive fastidiousness, which makes him dissatisfied with all that he does himself or sees done by others; which represses and finally suppresses all the buoyant and spirited activity of the intellect, leaving it sluggish as ‘the dull weed that rots by Lethe’s wharf.’”
Forms of creative effort.
No teacher and no system of training can furnish both brains and culture. It is not the mission of any person to create in every line of effort. Some find their joy in evolving and expressing thought with tongue or pen, others through the brush or the chisel, and still others through machinery and the handicrafts. In every occupation man may experience the joy of creating if his powers of imaging are allowed to play and interplay with other activities of thought. Each in normal conditions helps the others, and the activity of all combined is essential to complete living.
At Learning’s fountain it is sweet to drink,But ’tis a nobler privilege to think;And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mindMay make the nectar which it cannot find.’Tis well to borrow from the good and great;’Tis wise to learn; ’tis godlike to create!J. G. Saxe.Madame Swetchine says that to have ideas is to gather flowers: to think is to weave them into garlands. There could be no happier synonym for thinking than the word weaving,—a putting together of the best products of observation, reading, experience, and travel so as to represent a patterned whole, receiving its design from the weaver’s own mind. We have plenty of flowers; we want more garlands. We have libraries, books, and newspapers; we want more thinkers.T. Sharper Knowlson.
At Learning’s fountain it is sweet to drink,But ’tis a nobler privilege to think;And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mindMay make the nectar which it cannot find.’Tis well to borrow from the good and great;’Tis wise to learn; ’tis godlike to create!J. G. Saxe.
At Learning’s fountain it is sweet to drink,But ’tis a nobler privilege to think;And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mindMay make the nectar which it cannot find.’Tis well to borrow from the good and great;’Tis wise to learn; ’tis godlike to create!J. G. Saxe.
At Learning’s fountain it is sweet to drink,
But ’tis a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
’Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
’Tis wise to learn; ’tis godlike to create!
J. G. Saxe.
Madame Swetchine says that to have ideas is to gather flowers: to think is to weave them into garlands. There could be no happier synonym for thinking than the word weaving,—a putting together of the best products of observation, reading, experience, and travel so as to represent a patterned whole, receiving its design from the weaver’s own mind. We have plenty of flowers; we want more garlands. We have libraries, books, and newspapers; we want more thinkers.
T. Sharper Knowlson.
In speaking of our inner life we employ language that abounds in metaphors drawn from the external world. Some are faded metaphors; others are still fresh and new enough to suggest what was in the minds of those first using them. Many of these metaphorical expressions draw attention to one side or phase of the truth. If pressed with the design of making them embody the whole truth, they become untruths.
The flow of thought.
One fact of our waking consciousness is that thought goes on without stopping so long as we remain awake. Indeed, some philosophers have drawn the inference that the soul always thinks, that during the hours of deep sleep the brain-centres may be at rest, but that thought nevertheless flows on in the unconscious depths of our being. Locke combats this idea at length and with more than usual warmth. During sleep on a railway train we sometimes seem to be awake, the ends of our conscious thinking apparently fitting into each other without gaps; and yet the calling out of the stations convinces us that we must have been wrapped in unconscious slumber when we passed certain stations without noticing that the train stopped and the stations were announced. On the other hand, it is the experience of earnest students that the striking of a clock may escape notice because the mind has been deeply absorbed in a difficult problem.
Teacher’s duty.
The question need not concern us beyond the fact that the thinking of our most wakeful moments perpetually plays into our subconscious life. In order that the flowof thought welling up from the deepest depths of the soul may be clear, copious, and full, it is the duty of the teacher to keep himself and his pupils wide awake during the hours of study and recitation. He should not worry them by excessive tasks or unreasonable examinations so that the hours of sleep are disturbed by dreams, followed during the day by weariness and fatigue. The folly of burning the midnight oil and of spending too many hours each day in mental toil is fraught with evil consequences in the domain of thought. In the main Harbaugh was right when he undertook to change Franklin’s maxim about early rising into the following form: “Go to bed early, and get up late; but then keep awake all day.”
Thought like a stream.
So far as we are aware, thought is going forward continuously while we are awake. This phase of consciousness has been likened to a stream, and has given rise to the expression,The stream of thought. The metaphor can be pressed very far without conveying untruths. A stream does not always flow with the same velocity. It is at times deep, at other times shallow, now moving forward like a swollen torrent, now flowing placidly with scarcely a wave or a ripple perceptible on its surface. Here its smooth course is disturbed by wind and storm and rain; there its even flow is influenced by rocks and irregularities in the bed of the stream. Again and again its current is modified by affluents which empty their waters into the main stream, perhaps changing the appearance from clear to cloudy or muddy, or, it may be, exerting the opposite effect. To all these peculiarities in the flow of the stream there are likenesses in the stream of thought. At times it is deep and at other times shallow, now violent and disturbed, now calm and placid, sometimes clear to the bottom, sometimes cloudy, yea, muddy, always modifiedmore or less by influences from without, which are taken up into the main current of thought and alter the stream like the tributaries of a great river.
Early life.
Other metaphors.
On reaching the level country a river may spread out into a lake, resulting in a clearing up of the water and resembling the periods of calm meditation during which the soul clarifies its thinking. The lifelike behavior of rivers and the carving of land forms from their youth through maturity to old age have furnished many a figure of speech for our poetic literature. The change from the active upper waters to the sedate lower current may typify the change in the stream of thought as we pass from youth to age. While the volume of the stream is small and the channel lacks depth, it is easy to change the direction of the current, as sometimes happens when a straight channel is dug to take the place of its windings. In early life the stream of thought is apt to wander in meandering courses; the teacher may very frequently find it necessary to keep the mind from wandering, to direct the stream of thought towards the destined goal, and to make it groove for itself channels in harmony with logical habits. In teaching pupils to think it is quite as essential to give direction to thought as it is to furnish either thought-stimulus or thought-material. In one respect the metaphor, stream of thought, fails utterly to express the truth. The constituents of thought are not related to each other like the molecules of a liquid which move freely among themselves. Thoughts have a connection with those that precede and those that follow. An inner nexus binds the successive portions of a demonstration. Hence other figures of speech have been employed to denote the connection between the successive elements of a logical proof, such as the train of thought, the line of argument, the chain of reasoning.
Cognitive function.
It will be readily admitted that often our thinking is so loose and disjointed that its component parts resemble the liquid more than the chain, whereas our best thinking—namely, that which leads to a goal in the shape of a trustworthy conclusion—resembles a train of cars in which motive power is derived not from steam, but from a conscious expenditure of will-power. The teacher may perform the triple function of fireman, engineer, and switch-tender, supplying the fuel for the process, regulating the speed, and directing it along the lines of track which lead to the desired goal. It is as natural for a pupil to think as it is for a stream to flow towards the ocean. The stream may run shallow if no supply of water is received from the outside. It is the mission of the teacher to keep up the supply, to remove as far as possible the obstructions which are likely to throw the current of thought into unexpected channels. It is a peculiarity of this current of thinking that it is cognitive, or possesses the function of knowing. Human thought resembles the stream in seemingly taking up and carrying what was not a part of itself. Just as the stream of water carries minerals in solution as well as silt, sand, pebbles, and even heavier objects, so the stream of thought appears to lay hold of objects and to carry them as part of itself. Here, however, the strings of the analogy break. The stream of thought is in the mind; the objects with which it deals are outside of the mind. Mental pictures of these objects float in the stream of thought as objects on the bank of a river are mirrored in its waters; yet the parallel is not complete, because the mind may turn the eye upon itself and make what is thus seen the object of thought. This turning upon itself may be likened to eddies in the stream. But even when the mind thus turns back upon itself and views its own states and activities, these areregarded as objective, as related to the thinking process very much like the objects of knowledge in the external world.
Another important phase of thinking finds no likeness in any of the figures of speech above referred to. The mind meets certain objects of thought on which it seems to tarry or fasten itself. This has led some writers to deny that the stream of thought is a continuous current. This view causes undue stress to be laid upon the material of thought, and leads the teacher to undervalue his function as directing guide in teaching pupils to think. Even Professor Bain claims that,—
Bain’s view.
“The stream of thought is not a continuous current, but a series of distinct ideas, more or less rapid in their succession, the rapidity being measurable by the number that pass through the mind in a given time. Mental excitement is constantly judged of by this test; and if we choose to count and time the thoughts as they succeed one another, we could give so much more precision to the estimate.”[32]
Transitions.
Two phases.
These transitions should not be confounded with the relations between objects of thought or between objects in the external world. The relations may be part of the thought of that which is perceived or known, or they may be made distinct ideas or thoughts. The important phase under consideration is the passage of the mind from one idea or thought to another. Such transitions are quite as important and quite as much a part of the current of thought as the premises and conclusions on which the mind seems to rest. These two phases of the thought-process may be likened to the perching and the flight of a bird. This figure of speech is used by Professor James, amongwhose services to the profession of teaching it is not the least that he has called attention to the importance of these transitions in the stream of consciousness. His account is so lucid and satisfactory that one cannot forbear to quote his words at some length. Referring to the stream of thought, he says,—
View of Professor James.
“Like a bird’s life, it seems to be made up of an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses this, where every thought is expressed in a sentence and every sentence closed by a period. The resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imaginations of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they can be held before the mind for an indefinite time and contemplated without changing; the places of flight are filled with thoughts of relations, static or dynamic, that for the most part obtain between the matters contemplated in the periods of comparative rest.Let us call the halting-placesthe ‘substantive’ parts and the places of flight the ‘transitive’ parts of the stream of thought. It then appears that the main need of our thinking is at all times the attainment of some other substantive part than the one from which we have just been dislodged. And we may say that the main use of the transitive parts is to lead us from one substantive conclusion to another. Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive parts for what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before a conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst if we wait until the conclusion be reached, it so exceeds them in vigor and stability that it quite eclipses and swallows them up in its glare. Let any one try to cut a thought in the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive tract is. The rush of the thought is so headlongthat it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. Or if our purpose is nimble enough and we do arrest it, it ceases forthwith to be itself. As a snow-flake crystal caught in the warm hand is no longer a crystal, but a drop, so, instead of catching the feeling of relation moving to its term, we find we have caught some substantive thing, usually the last word we were pronouncing, statistically taken, and with its function, tendency, and particular meaning in the sentence quite evaporated. The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is, in fact, like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see the darkness. And the challenge toproducethese psychoses, which is sure to be thrown by doubting psychologists at any one who contends for their existence, is as unfair as Zeno’s treatment of the advocates of motion, when, asking them to point out in what place an arrowiswhen it moves, he argues the falsity of their thesis from their inability to make to so preposterous a question an immediate reply.”[33]
Nouns, verbs, etc.
Connectives.
The science of logic deals almost altogether with the halting-places, with the substantive parts, with the ideas, notions, concepts that are to be compared, and with the resulting judgments, inferences, and conclusions. Whether the teacher has studied the science of logic or not, it is to these he devotes his chief attention; they can be analyzed, defined, and clearly fixed as thought-products or knowledge. Defects in the thinking-process are apt to show themselves here; at least, they furnish tangible data for criticism, corrections, and reviews. These thought-products on which the mind loves to linger are denoted by nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs,—the parts of speech which constitutethe bulk of the vocabulary of every language. The movements of the mind from one object of thought to another are indicated by conjunctions and other connectives. Thinkers are often known by their favorite connective words and phrases. Pupils catch these from the phraseology of their teachers, or pick them up unconsciously from the books they read. Some languages are richer in such connective words and phrases than others; the mind carries away some influence in the way of making these transitions in thought from every language which it studies; its thinking is moulded by the language which it masters. Logic has very little to say about these transitions for which one language sometimes supplies words and expressions altogether wanting in another. Frequently we grow conscious of them through the feeling of a gap to be filled, or of a chasm to be leaped over, or of an obstacle to be cleared away, or of something that obstructs our thinking and hinders it from reaching the goal. Here again one cannot refrain from quoting Professor James, although his words do not indicate that he fully realizes the value for elementary instruction of what he has written. Here are his words:
“The truth is that large tracts of human speech are nothing butsigns of directionin thought, of which direction we, nevertheless, have an acutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts; we can hold them still, and look at them as long as we like. These bare images of logical movements, on the contrary, are psychic transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in flight. Their function is to lead from one set of images to another. As they pass, we feel both the waxing and the waning images in a way quite different from the way oftheir full presence. If we try to hold fast the feeling of direction, the full presence comes, and the feeling of direction is lost. The blank verbal scheme of logical movement gives us the fleeting sense of the movement as we read it, quite as well as does a rational sentence awakening definite imaginations by its words.”[34]
Directing the youthful mind.
Right here the teacher who is an artist finds the opportunity for the display of his highest skill. It is his privilege to direct the flights and the perchings of the youthful mind. He can shape the thoughts and their sequence. He can cause the intellect to move from the reason to its consequence, or in the reverse direction if that be more natural or more appropriate. He can guide the thought from cause to effect, from the whole to the parts, from the general to the particular, from the end to the means, from the design to its execution; or a movement the other way is possible in each of these categories. While thus choosing the direction which thought shall take, he can select the objects upon which it shall tarry. This directing influence he will often exert when he is not aware of it. His own habits of mind will be reflected in the mental life of his pupils. There was profound philosophy in the reply of a gifted author who, when asked by his daughter what she should study, said, “I am more concerned about the teachers under whom you study than about the branches of study which you may select.” Habits of thought depend far more upon the teacher than upon the text-book, upon the quality of the instruction than upon its general content. There is, of course, a difference in the culture value of different branches of study; but a study as valuable as geometry may be pursued in a loose way, whilst branches of much inferior value for developingpower to think may be taught and studied by the methods of rigid and exact thought.
The artist-teacher.
Forms of speech.
In shaping the activity of thought, the artist-teacher makes the mind tarry long enough for clear apprehension, sometimes for thorough comprehension, upon the ideas, judgments, and conclusions which are the framework of a system of thought, but he does not neglect the transitions from one to the other, as if these were of little account or necessarily took care of themselves. The transitions in thought are aided by set phrases and forms of solution. As soon as these are mastered, there develops the tendency to think them as algebraic symbols, which do substitute duty in the absence of that for which they stand. For fear of this, the teacher sometimes fails to drill on them long enough to fix them in the mind,—certainly a radical mistake. Drill is a condition of the highest discipline in the school as well as in the army. The drill-master seeks to habituate the soldier to the word of command, so that he will obey in the face of danger without thinking of the consequences. The drill-master at school seeks to make it second nature for a pupil to go through the logical motions, but not without conscious thought of the process or the consequences. Whenever the learner uses forms of parsing, analysis, or solution, his mind should go through the movements of thought expressed by the language. Ask any ordinary class to give you a noun of the first person; they are almost sure to give you either a noun of the third person or a pronoun of the first person. Dictate a sentence with a noun in the first person, and ask the pupils to parse it in the customary way; in nearly all cases they will parse it as a noun of the third person. Ask them to tell why a personal pronoun is so called; frequently they say because it indicates a person,—a statement quite applicableto other kinds of pronouns. If the logical or customary forms of speech are employed, the stream of thought moves on, the mind often failing to perceive the new truth, or error, or nonsense inherent in the language employed. School-boys have tricks of their own which turn upon this peculiarity in the movement of thought. “Who killed Cain?” is suddenly asked. “Abel,” is the reply generally elicited by the question. Should you say, Nine times sevenisorareforty-two? The boy who decides in favor ofisoraregets a shock of surprise on being told that the product of nine times seven is not forty-two.
A strange reply.
One day a teacher was lecturing upon education in the dark ages. To show how the energies of the common people were exhausted in the struggle for existence, the resolution of a synod in the south of France was cited. The resolution enjoined upon the bishops the duty of seeing to it that during a period of scarcity of food the peasants were at least provided with bread made of acorns. A few minutes later a reference was made to the autobiography of Thomas Platter, in which certain things are described as happening about the time of the Diet of Worms. On being asked in what period of history that was, a pupil promptly replied, “When the common people were fed on worms.”
Biblical phraseology.